From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 94 21:46:32 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Remailers: The Next Generation
Message-ID: <9401240536.AA19332@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Phil Karn suggests we look at anonymous forwarders for IP as well as mail.
It's an interesting idea - Eric Hughes and Matt Blaze have recently
talked about "packet laundering" at Bay Area Cypherpunks meetings,
and there's been some work done on multi-stage laundering with
cutouts in the middle so it really stays anonymous.
Some issues include how to pay for it (digicash is one obvious approach),
how to set up rendevous, and the usual datagram-vs-circuit problems
of how long to maintain an association between addresses at the forwarder.

On the other hand, while the Internet is rapidly absorbing email,
there are lots of email systems that are *not* IP-based, such as
uucp-over-dialup, Fidonet, X.400-over-OSI, and commercial mail systems
that may forward to and from the internet but run their own backbones,
which help make remailers harder to trace.

There's also the hybrid issue, where you tunnel IP across whatever
transport medium is available - there are some people doing this over telnet,
and it would be a convenient way to do things like get IP service
from a flat-rate dialup access provider without paying $2/hour for SLIP, etc.

		Bill
# Bill Stewart  NCR Corp, 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566
# Voice/Beeper 510-224-7043, Phone 510-484-6204
# email bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart@attmail.com
# ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465